Category: Online Resources

While open access repositories and journals are free for end users, they do cost money to set up and maintain. Forward-thinking libraries are beginning to allocate funds to support open access resources.

BioMed Central

Knowledge Unlatched

Knowledge Unlatched creates packages of scholarly books in the humanities and social studies which are “unlatched” to become open access ebooks through membership contributions. The first two rounds allowed the release of over 100 titles, made available for free via the HathiTrust Digital Library and OAPEN. The pledging period for the next collection, KU Select 2016, runs through January 31, 2017.

Open Library

Open Library is an initiative of the Internet Archive with “one web page for every book” ever published. Users can read public domain “classic books” for free or borrow up to five titles for two weeks each. Users can contribute by adding books or editing records. Sign up for a personal account or register your library to provide in-library loans for users on your library network.

International Open Access Week starts today and runs from October 24–30, 2016. For all of the details, visit www.openaccessweek.org.

This year’s theme is “open in action” with an emphasis on how you can take practical steps to implement open access in your library or support its growth.

Ways to Participate

Many organizations which embrace and promote open access are sponsoring events to encourage participation in open access resources. Here are just a few of them.

Open Access Week Commitment

The Open Access Week organization is asking librarians to sign up and take “concrete steps to open up research and scholarship and encourag[e] others to do the same”. Sign up at www.action.openaccessweek.org.

Follow on Social Media

Get an ORCID iD

Do you have an ORCID iD? ORCID stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID and is a unique 16-digit number which distinguishes you from other researchers in online resources. Register for an ORCID iD at orcid.org/register.

Join COAPI

The Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions (COAPI) exists to allow member libraries to help develop and share open access policies. Sponsored by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), COAPI offers best practices and advocacy for open access. To become a member library, see sparcopen.org/become-a-member.

Support Open Access Resources

While open access repositories and journals are free for end users, they do cost money to set up and maintain. Forward-thinking libraries are beginning to allocate funds to support open access resources (and to support faculty who want to contribute articles to them). Here’s how you can support open access resources.

Bake Some Cookies

Think open access only applies to online resources? You can bake your very own cookies in the shape of the open access logo with a cookie cutter printed from your 3D printer using some open access cookie cutter printer files. The scalable files are in .stl and .dae format and were created by Chip Wolfe from Hunt Library at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Download the open access cookie cutter files.

API stands for Application Programming Interface which allows external applications to access software or Web services data, in the latter case by using HTTP request messages, for recombination (mashup) or custom presentation by the external application.

Why use APIs?

Application programming interfaces essentially allow programs and online services to talk to each other. APIs provide a set of definitions and protocols for services to request and exchange data. Many library vendors provide public and key-based APIs to their services in order to allow customers to pull bibliographic and other data into local systems and websites.

The Basics

For our purposes, we’ll only look at Web APIs.

Web services and applications exchange data through APIs using a request and response system. The exchange uses HTTP and HTTPS (secure HTTP) like regular Web requests, however the data isn’t formatted for people to read but rather for other services. The data format is usually expressed in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) or Extensible Markup Language (XML).

The American Library Association has added the audio and presentation files from many of the conference sessions to its ALA 2016 Annual Conference website. For librarians interested in library technology, there were four must-attend sessions and fortunately ALA has the audio for these four sessions. You’ll need to log in to the conference website to access them.

Linked Data – Globally Connecting Libraries, Archives, and Museums

In the past years, libraries have embraced their role as global participants in the Semantic Web. Developments in library metadata frameworks such as BIBFRAME and RDA built on standard data models and ontologies including RDF, SKOS and OWL highlight the importance of linking data in an increasingly global environment. What is the status of linked data projects in libraries and other memory institutions internationally? Come hear our speakers address current projects, opportunities and challenges. Sponsored by the ALCTS International Relations Committee. Co-Sponsored by ALCTS/LITA Linked Library Data Interest Group.

The implementation of BIBFRAME and Linked Data is poised to revolutionize the access of scholarly articles and research data. This session covered some projects including an open database of Linked Data from the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (German National Library), the Open Metadata Registry (OMR), and r-balls which contain “packages of data”—Linked Data and semantic Web representations of cultural heritage resources described using RDA.

Marshall Breeding, author of the annual Library Systems Report published in American Libraries, will assemble and moderate a panel of CEO or other senior executives representing organizations that produce software or services for libraries. Breeding will give a brief introduction and will then lead a lively discussion to probe at the technology and business trends currently in play, including industry consolidation, differing approaches to opening software to library programmers, and the shift toward cloud-based technologies. Panelists will be expected to candidly reflect the perspectives of their organizations, but not promote their products. The select panel will include representatives of organizations that produce commercial products, open source software, and will reflect for-profit and non-profit perspectives.

In this session, Marshall Breeding gathered executives from major library vendor companies and questioned them on topics including library vendor consolidation, comparative openness of their platforms, and more. The three ILS vendors took subtle jabs at each other, while OCLC emphasized their nonprofit model. Hammer took the opportunity to introduce an open library services platform (LSP) called FOLIO (of which we’ll have more soon).

Library staff employed in information technology (I.T.) departments are often seen as support staff, only providing services when something breaks. But what more can library IT staff do to support the mission of their libraries? In this presentation we will explore why library IT staff should maximize their ability to work across various library departments to collaboratively design new library services rather than being relegated to support staff. We will also explore how library IT staff may challenge traditional bureaucratic organization structures to lead change efforts.

The speakers discussed the relationship of the library with its information technology staff (who may or may not be librarians). They recommended that library IT staff be should be proactive. “Don’t just wait around for problems to solve.” Library IT staff should seek out opportunities to learn what other library staff do and join teams to get more involved.

This program features our ongoing roundtable discussion about trends and advances in library technology by a panel of LITA technology experts. The panelists will describe changes and advances in technology that they see having an impact on the library world, and suggest what libraries might do to take advantage of these trends. More information on Top Tech Trends: http://ala.org/lita/ttt

This was a huge session in one of the largest conference rooms. Panelists were asked to state their top tech trends in a word: concepts, real time, virtual reality, balance (security vs. access), and super-easy application development. “Library technology staff need to read vendor contracts to ensure privacy and security.” Tools libraries can use to encourage open everything include promotion, shifting academic attitudes, and institutional repositories. Panelists were asked about the Internet of Things: Useful or useless technology trend? “Security is key.” American Libraries posted a session summary on their blog.

The ALA 2016 Annual Conference is just about a month away. The conference covers a myriad of library topics and sorting through the program sessions to find the ones focused on library technology takes effort. Let us do the work for you.